China in retraction - lead prices?

I don't pretend to know enough to extrapolate what this means for a potential drop in lead costs, but common sense would indicate there ought to be less demand for it. - wireguy

The Starving of China's Economy
September 10, 2012

China's August trade data is set to reveal an awkward truth. For all the strength and flexibility policymakers in the world's second-biggest economy have, the sector of activity they can do least about is causing them the biggest problem. August export growth is forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll to have been just 3 percent year on year, which would make it the weakest August since 2009 - near the depths of the global financial crisis and underlining President Hu Jintao's warning of the "grave challenges" posed by the world economy. Such weak growth would be grim news in a country where exports generate 25 percent of gross domestic product, support an estimated 200 million jobs, and where analysts already expect the economy to have its weakest year of expansion since 1999. The problem is that despite deep government pockets, record tax receipts, a budget in surplus in the first half of the year and monetary policy still on the tight side even with inflation near two-year lows, there is little policymakers in Beijing can do to stimulate demand beyond their borders. China's biggest customers are the debt-ridden, recession-bound European Union and the still struggling United States.
- Reuters